


Another Start Of The End Of The World

by Lucarn



Series: The Body of Malice / The Mind of Will [1]
Category: Shadow Hearts
Genre: Corpse Desecration, Diary/Journal, Don’t copy to another site, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Spoilers, Tags Contain Spoilers, headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-25 21:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19754212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucarn/pseuds/Lucarn
Summary: Why do these things always seem to start with the Emigré Manuscript?Or: Several diary entries in the journal of Roger Bacon.





	1. Garland Residence

Date: ** xxxx, Year 1926:

_[The writing is shaky, uneven as if the writer had to stop several times and begin anew.]_

I’ve returned from my journey to retrieve the Emigré Manuscript with heavy thoughts and a heavy mind. 

The thieves were two men, one who wanted to become a great black magician for fame, and a father who lost his children in a car accident five years ago. They didn’t do a good job of hiding their trail. I wouldn’t discover the identity of the second man until later, but the name ‘Graham Garland’ easily led me to the U.S.A.

A big name in New York. He headed and owned one of the U.S.'s most successful home appliance manufacturers. Nowadays people chatter mostly about a broken man who had turned to the occult, attending seances and the likes, and was trying his best to care for his two comatose children in a private room in the hospital.

A car accident. Gapers held up the rescue efforts so resuscitation efforts came too late to prevent severe damage. ~~Humans are as despicable as ever. We are what causes the most suffering to each other.~~

The children definitely had been in a hospital, but not in just any room, even a private one. They were hosted in an experimental, secret unit that worked with cryogenic technology.(*) A lot of money flowed to keep that piece of information from the public. 

(* _Possessing contacts on every continent in the world except on Antarctica is immensely helpful._ ) 

But they had been ‘released’ a week ago before I arrived, so Garland’s preparation must have been drawing to a close.

My search led me finally to the Garland Residence in the New York suburbs. It seemed like the most probable location for hidden experiments, especially because other rumors spoke about dozens of trucks bringing boxes to the mansion in the last few weeks, although Garland supposedly lived at his office.

Normal humans would never notice before monsters appeared right in front of them but I sensed the presence of Malice from miles away. My fears were confirmed when I found a hidden basement that was the origin of all that angry energy. Disinfectant mixed with the odor of dead bodies, wafting out from an open door that looked more like a vault than a lab. Inside I spotted the thieves, reciting one of the invocations in front of two tubes housing one child-sized figure each.

Just as I stepped in to stop two men, they finished with the ritual. And to my amazement… the girl awoke, body hale, clearly full of Malice, but equally full of Will. Most importantly were her eyes. Eyes are the window of the soul for a reason and they showed her soul. Awareness. Recognition. Reason.

It stopped me in my tracks, in awe. Never before did the Emigré Ritual work before as it was intended. My fascination as a scientist shifted my mind as if I was observing an experiment.

Unfortunately, her father let his attention slip. He too stopped when his daughter woke when he should have kept monitoring the situation.

He didn’t notice that the second tube with his son only held malice.

Had Garland reacted, he could have stopped the transformation instantly. I would know. I know this cursed manuscript by heart and this particular ritual has measures to direct the flow of Will. But since I had not started and performed the ritual, I couldn’t intervene, and Graham didn’t listen to my pleads to keep going.

The boy would not survive. Not with his mind intact. He would become another monster in human-shape, like Elaine Heyworth had, and attack anybody close by.

Or he would have if not for his sister’s intervention. I don’t know how she did it but she must have sensed what was happening. She transferred all of her Will to him until only Malice remained around her before anybody was able to react.

She fell then asleep in the red light. (*)

(* _May her soul find peace._ )

And her tube exploded. I knew what happened before I saw it.

The teenager girl, not a child, who stepped out was not the same person anymore. Her eyes were empty. I felt nothing from her soul but pure Malice even if she appeared normal.

Garland, the fool, didn’t recognize the danger. She struck him down just as he approached her. I didn’t dare to intervene. She possessed enough Malice that it would've injured even my immortal body. She looked at me as if she was expecting I dare to stop her as well. For better or worse, she then left without even one look back. A monster on the loose to who-knows-where. The magician cried and stammered and shuddered all the while. I’ve seen that expression of insanity before – it used to be mine when I first deciphered the terrible truths of the universe. He fled as if demons were chasing him. For all I know, there were.

That left only the boy and I in that cursed place. 

Malice charged the air from various animal and even human carcasses stored in the boxes around us. In contrast, Will filled the entire tube so he seemed submerged in sparkling blue water. 

He looked at me, curious. Calm. Obviously unaware of what had happened to his family just seconds ago.

I didn’t know what I was feeling when I released him from the tube. He stood barely a head taller than me which speaks of his youth. He is the first human to be ever successfully revived with the Emigré Manuscript’s rituals, but it had brought tragedy again anyway. This wasn’t an occasion to celebrate.

And I don’t call on the name of any god anymore, but I thought (*) – this is a child.

(* _This is a child who lost his sister, his father, in rapid succession and I am the only person who stayed behind for him to welcome him back to life. A stranger who let this tragedy happen._

 _What would this knowledge do to him if he remembers?_ )

His awareness quickly faded with his strength. He was as healthy as if never injured, only exhausted from the energy used in the ritual. I ushered him out of the basement, manipulating the Malice to use one of the monsters to carry out Garland’s body to the first floor and to protect us. 

Then I closed the basement’s opening and I ushered him out of the house. I had smelled gas. 

The girl was nowhere to be seen. Her violent exit had rocked he entire structure, breaking pipes and electrical lines. My caution was well-earned when flames spit out of one the rooms into the entrance area before I kicked the exit shut, barely holding up the boy. The monster carried Graham into the garden where it propped him against a tree as the house shook and creaked and smoked. 

The boy fell unconscious in my lap just when a tremendous CRACK filled the air. The ground shook. Whether a coincidence or the toll signaling the ultimate end of his old life, he collapsed the same moment his house did. Blue light streamed from his body, dispelling the monster. His robes as well as his markings vanished, leaving him in casual clothes.

I don’t know how long I sat there holding him (*) before sirens rang in the distance. I leaned him against another tree in the garden where he would be quickly found and dispelled the rest of the lingering Malice so he would be safe before I made a quick escape. 

(* _I feel responsible for his fate. But I couldn’t stay, let alone do something foolish like taking care of him. Not that I’d ever want that! Me, the Great Roger Bacon, adopting a human being? I have better things to do. Besides, my mere presence would put him into danger. As long as people exist who believe I am the ‘Author’, they’ll keep seeking me out. Just one thing going wrong…_

 _And perish the thought if the Vatican hears the name ‘Roger Bacon’! It was best I removed myself from the situation._ )

Given his resurrection, he likely won’t remember anything of the events that transpired because his mind will unable to retain and transfer the details into his long-term memories.

He will still wake up in a world where his entire family is dead. Hopefully he’ll be well cared for emotionally by one or several adults. A support network to help him heal and move on. Money for the son of a man like Graham Garland isn’t a concern. True friends are a different matter.

I remained in New York for a few weeks after to piece everything together about what had happened, why, and now. I tried to understand who this family had been. Even if I refused to meddle, even if I found little about the children beyond that Graham had probably neglected them, I felt I owed it to Grace Garland, the child who gave up her life, and to Johnathan Garland, the child who remained.

The magician, however. Marlow Brown. I feel no sympathy for the man. He had performed the ritual for personal gain only and abused the despair of a grieving parent in order to gain fame.

His notes held countless details of various acts of black magic he had dabbled in carelessly over the years, including a ritual that allowed him to peer into a realm where Malice collects in immense amounts. Worse, he can open windows that allow passage from said realm. A dangerous ability and one I doubt he can actually control. I burned everything since his current location eludes me. (*) The risk that somebody else could abuse this magic would’ve been too great. 

(* _And it made me feel a bit better. Just a tiny bit. The notion that my works inspired him…_ )

Still. I hope he finds peace. As vile as humanity as a whole can be, nobody should suffer from the insanity inflicted on by seeing things not meant to be seen by humans.

\---

Before I left, I visited the funeral to pay my respects to the Garland family. (*) 

(* _In disguise, of course. Only few can handle the sight of my glory._ ) 

They obviously couldn’t find Grace Garland’s body so her casket stood open and empty unlike her father’s. Where is the entity now that she has become? What is her goal? I haven’t heard yet any news about strange events or monster sightings. Well, more monster sightings than is usual nowadays.

Johnathan Garland struck a miserable figure. Certainly, his body was still healthy and somebody was caring for his physical well-being. His hair was cut and clean, his cheeks full from regular meals. That doesn't mean the mind is well. He moved easily but automatically through the service as if he hadn’t been dead just a short time ago yet wasn’t truly alive either - more like a doll in a mourning suit. He shook hands and received well-wishes with toneless thanks and hazy green eyes. He looked even younger than he had in the laboratory. Watching him, I feared he yet had lost his mind in the meantime, if only from the pain of his loss.

I remained behind after the service ended to stare at the grave. Dozens of flower bouquets framed the rectangle of fresh earth and the tomb stone bearing two new inscriptions. I read them over and over again until the words lost all meaning. I didn’t pray but I bid farewell. 

When I finally made my way to the cemetery’s exit, I spotted a large man ahead. He hunched over and embraced a familiar small figure clad in a black suit, showing only a mop of blond hair who shook with silent sobs. Cowardly, I averted my gaze from the scene. I went back on the path and made a wide circle around the pair.

There was nothing there for me to do anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things fixed:
> 
> ☑ Johnny left the basement in the Garland Residence with Roger's help but under his own power.  
> ☑ Roger directed a monster to carry out Graham's body.  
> ☑ It's also Roger who sealed the entrance to the basement.  
> ☑ He took time to research what happened and had help from third parties, which is how he knows so much when he later talks to Johnny.  
> ☑ Old man developed emotional connection to boy.
> 
> If Roger knew that he had adopted Yuri in an alternative timeline where the young man had lost his soul... I wanted to reference that with his line about adoption.
> 
> Edit: Changed Graham's occupation. According to Lenny's diary, his company's technical team made Johnny's vacuum cleaner. I wonder what Graham was expecting to happen to have that kind of thing developed...


	2. Observations

**Journal: Personal observations on various magic rituals, volume xxx**

Date: ** xxxx, Year 1926:

**The New York Incident; involvement of the Emigré Manuscript**

[[An introduction summarizes what happened in the Garland Residence. It also explains every step of the ritual Graham Garland and Marlow Brown used for the twins' resurrection, but that with some details missing, Roger doesn't know how that might have affected the process.]]

-so my observations are constrained to what I could witness externally with my senses. Since ‘Grace’ or whoever she is now left so quickly, I didn’t get a good look at her appearance. I had more time observing her brother, so I will be using many short-cuts comparing the two. Thankfully my memory is so excellent.

Drawings will follow later and include details as well as color schemes.

  * The ritual put strange markings of light blue, grey- or blue-tinted black, and golden on Johnathan’s face, bare arms and feet. Notably, a shade of brilliant deep blue, like the ocean carries sometimes, ran under his eyes like tear tracks. The ritual also had conjured clothes with the same colors – their patterns continued to and from the markings! – and they completely covered the rest of his body in a strange mix of ceremonial robes and a tight-fitted suit.


  * Grace wore a similar set with several differences like the specific cut, wide sleeves, shorter trousers that ended below the knees, and a pair of flat boots. The only markings I spotted on her were golden lines on her lower arms and her shins.


  * Their garments' color schemes, however, mirrored each other. The light blue dominated the upper body with a minor dash of it on the legs. Grace sleeves and the torso of her suit; her boots. The markings on Johnathan's arms and the torso of his suit; a stripe on each heel running up his calves. The black covered their hands and their legs. 


  * It’s possible that more of said patterns hid under their clothes. The robes on Johnathan seemed to replicate on the outside what was drawn (inked?) on his arms, face, and shoulders. See for an explanation in the paragraph right above.


  * Only the gold was drawn in lines and strokes, accentuating and framing the planes of blues and black. Their shapes remind me of circuit boards…


  * Thick, golden bands emerged from the flesh and end of their extremities like a rising tide. They started as bracelets on Johnathan’s wrists – mirrored on Grace’s wrists - but spaced out up along the curve of his arms. Hers were anklets, protruding from the back of her feet, crowded closely against each other.


  * Red ropes crossed on her back. A reflection of the Malice? The patterns they made resembled those on the back of Johnathan's clothes.


  * The strangest details, which made me first think that their outfits might be ceremonial combined with the patterns, were the metal objects they wore. ( _If_ they were metal). A golden round disc set in an arc like a sun disk rested on his forehead (the disk vanished when he exited the tube), similar designs covered her ears but the disc vaguely resembled a tear drop. Hers carried a red vivid stripe following the arc’s curve; his did the same, in the same blue from the streaks under his eyes.



Their appearances parallel and mirror each other, but whether or not the source is coincidentally tied into their connection as twins or something else?

  * The "why" and "how" baffle me but the ritual's failure seemingly 'aged' Grace's body to her chronological age. She had been clearly a child of 13 years before she transfered all of her Will to her brother. Who stepped then out was a girl or even a young woman in her _late teens_. Had she not interfered, would Johnathan's body have similarly 'aged' with the loss of his soul?



\---

Date: ** xxxx, Year 1926. Addendum 1:

[[Several pages sketch, both in color and black-and-white, and from different angles, two children on the cusp of being teenagers who wear strange garments. The details and notes on the boy are more numerous, but the girl is also shown as a young woman of roughly or younger than 20 years.]]

As I mentioned, their appearences clearly parallel each other. If you were to look at my sketches alone, you’d think they are meant to evoke some kind of mythological figures. Many gods, demons, concepts, etc. show similar parallels, shared details, and are known as twins.

_Complementaries._

I rechecked every entry in the Emigré Manuscript, but it mentioned nothing of the sorts. If there ever existed any such information, it had been lost in the passing of time and hands. Maybe it’s a simple idiosyncrasy but I’ve learned better over the last centuries. 'Grace' is still roaming somewhere in the world. Johnathan is alive. It might be that she'll instinctively seek him out because of their connection in order to fulfill the desires she pursues. Or because she can sense the Malice slumbering within him.

Awakening it could destroy his soul like hers was destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things Accomplished:
> 
> ☑ The clothes Lady and Awaker wear reference their canon outfits AND cover their bodies properly.  
> ☑ Roger voices his suspicions that something is odd about how the ritual influenced the twins' appearance.  
> ☑ Foreshadowing???


	3. Clear Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes. The world turns. A mind clears up.

Date: ** xxxx, Year 1926:

_[This entry dates several weeks after the last one. The handwriting now flows firmly and evenly.]_

It wasn't until last week that I realized just how much the events in New York have been hanging onto me like a noose around my neck. (And I have experience with that sensation.) I mentioned some of it in my last entry, but looking back, the experience shook me more than I was able to process at the time, which is why everything felt so muted.

Why, I have still the box with the notes I took when I hunted after the Emigré Manuscript, ignored in the corner of my library. Even now my stomach knots into itself when I look at it. 

Or maybe it was ignored because I slept most of the time in the last weeks despite the confounding dreams I suffered, memories mixing with images that haunt me but barely remember now. I was so tired that I didn't care to get up. It's been a while - I think at least two centuries? - since I last had such an episode. I thought myself immune, numb, having experienced too much of humanity's pain and atrocities, and my own share of agony.

... It's a strangely comforting thought that some part of me still can care so deeply that it hurts. Maybe I should read Yuri's letter again, write him back. We last saw each other three years ago and I miss him and the others. (Not that I'd ever tell him that.) They help ground me in the here and now.

A here and now I have to face. Weeks have passed since two powerful entities of Malice were created. One roams the North American continent unchecked while the other - I hope - lives a normal life.

I have no idea where Grace Garland, or who she is now, is going or what her goals are but her very existence will attract more monsters to form. The same will happen with Johnathan even if his Malice currently slumbers. For all that he retained his mind, his body is like Grace's. They are metaphysically and physically more supernatural than human now. Any contact with monsters or areas doused in Malice has the potential to awaken his own. A potential that has bigger chances of happening than I'd like, but the War's bloodshed still affects the world.

He could lose his mind, make him into the monster his sister barely saved him from becoming, then join her on her quest if she seeks him out. No, when she seeks him out.

That is actually one of my greatest worries. They might be connected through the ritual's magic, whose purpose I now think is more than to resurrect the dead. I have written my thoughts on this in my latest research journal, _Personal observations on various magic rituals, volume xxx_. I wish I'm wrong, but I've been unfortunately rarely incorrect when it comes to these matters.

I might need my friends' help, as loathe as I am to drag them into another world-saving venture.

P.S.: _Roger Bacon, you foolish man! You knew that the children had been dead for five years, you even worried about putting the boy into danger, yet you forgot that people would expect to see an eighteen year old teenager! Instead the public fussed about a child **on the cusp of puberty** at the age of thirteen._ Were my thoughts just a few minutes ago.

I nearly had a heart-attack, despite that I'm immortal, when I found a New Yorker newspaper showing a very grainy photograph of Johnathan on the third page. That I didn't notice back when I picked it up tells just of how out of my mind I was at the time.

Thankfully the article about the incident at the Garland Residence mentioned neither his age nor date of birth anywhere, just describing that he and his sister had been recently released from the hospital after an accident left them gravely injured. Johnathan's guardian refused to give any more information and said he would focus on helping the young man recover from the tragedy. Rereading, I distantly remembered hearing a rumor that Graham fiercely protected his family's privacy even before the twins' death. Nobody knew when they had been born or how they looked like despite his fame. People also gossiped that he had either bribed or treathened all major newspaper companies to never 'snoop about his children', which sent other tongues wagging he wanted to hide what an abysmal father he was since his young ones were barely ever seen outside of the house.

(Well. Graham certainly had been a neglectful one given his office hours. I can't tell how he treated his children as a whole.)

It made sense - he had used his money to hide that they had died so why not got further? This was a man in grief who secretly paid grave robbers and experimented on human remains.

He also had dismissed the old staff of his house and had them sent off out of New York to be replaced by a new staff- likely because they are the only ones who had seen the children before their death. I wouldn't be surprised if he put a gag order on them.

Still. Official birth records exist except if Graham had them meddled with. Not destroyed or stolen because that would be too obvious (not that I can be sure what he did). It’ll matter less once Jonathan’s older, but right now he’s 14 years old. He’ll never pass as a young man of 19 years.

Not under scrutiny. Not if people start asking questions or digging into his past. Scamming a rich orphan is certainly a incentive to do so. Some people will do anything evil under the sun if it gets them money or power.

And if anybody were to discover the basement? Find the bodies? Worst case scenario, the government, criminal empires, and / or the church will get involved because they are the most likely to possess knowledge about or interest in this topic. They might seek out Johnathan if only because he was found near the mansion when the fire happened.

I have enough experience with greedy men in authority who will imprison and manipulate and torture a child if they believe they will give them information on things they covet. Especially when they realize said child is special.

I need to keep watch on the situation, have somebody over in New York keep their ears on the ground...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things Accomplished:
> 
> ☑ Roger notes on the discrepancy between Johnny's chronological and physical ages.  
> ☑ And Graham's paranoia gives a reason why nobody discovers this or that Johnny has been resurrected. (At least nobody will discover it in the near future...)  
> ☑ Showing that Roger is invested in Johnny and Grace's fate.  
> ☑ Setting up future plot points with the bribery detail.
> 
> Edit: I added a paragraph about the staff that must have worked at the Graham's mansion before the kids died.


End file.
